Sunday, February 9, 2014

How Dumpster Diving Turned Me Into a Spud Freak

Potatoes come from the store in big, cheap bags. Why would I bother
growing something so inexpensive and plebeian when I could grow
delicious foods like tomatoes, peppers, herbs and garlic?

So for years, I didn’t plant potatoes.

Until the year I met my friend
The Professor. He was a respected teacher at a venerable private
college, married to a professional woman and living in a nice house in
the suburbs.

He was also a secret dumpster-diving addict. And we’re not talking hitting the trash for furniture and pallet wood:
no, he was after big game. Just-expired expensive cheeses, flats of
frozen beef, organic berries and whole-grain breads from the boutique
grocery. Frankly, the profusion – and sheer dollar value – of what he
retrieved blew my mind.

What does that have to do with potatoes? Well, one time, after making me swear not to reveal his secret
identity, he took me along. We careened through back alleys in his car,
lights off, gloves on, tipping the lids of dumpsters and keeping our
eyes open for both unsavory lurkers and local sheriffs. It was a rush,
yet the thing that really struck me about the evening was how much food we waste
as a nation. One of the foods we found scattered about in profusion
were potatoes. He told me he didn’t even bother picking them up most of
the time; but me, being a gardener and seeing many bags of potatoes
covered in eyes and young roots, couldn’t resist saving some to plant in
the backyard.

So I did. I dug a long bed, buried the dumpster potatoes haphazardly in the early spring and waited. A few months later, I pulled up baskets of spuds in all different shapes and colors – and discovered something unexpected.

Homegrown potatoes taste amazing.

Imagine the best French fries you’ve ever had… then double their
rich, crunchy flavor. Picture a bowl of steaming mashed potatoes… and
imagine that they have as much (or more) sheer deliciousity as the
savory gravy ladled over the top.

Since that year, I’ve grown potatoes every chance I get. Down here in
Florida I don’t find them to be remarkably productive, but they’re more
than worth having in the garden. Dinner guests are consistently amazed
by the velvety richness of our homegrown spuds. They’re so good, we
sometimes serve them as the main course.

So – how do YOU grow YOUR own deliciously incredible spudtastic potatoes?

It’s easy.

First, find yourself some seed potatoes. This is easier than you might think. People will tell you emphatically, “Don’t plant store-bought
potatoes!”

They then mumble strange phrases like “viral contamination”
and “sprout inhibitors.”

Though it’s true that some potatoes for sale in the grocery store
have been coated in chemicals to keep eyes from forming, I’m 99.7%
certain not all of them have...